Disparity of Wealth between the USA and Sub-Saharan Africa1
The disparity of wealth in the world seems incorrigible. Incorrigible means not able to be corrected or improved. What do you think? Is there nothing that we can do?
Are we just stuck in drastic and dire wealth polarity? I know that when I was a child, my mother used to scold me when I didn’t eat everything on my plate at dinner. She would say, “Clean your plate – there are starving children in Africa!”
Everyone that I mention this to says that they were told the same thing by their parents.
And what about all the time we were being possessive about a toy as a child? We were told to “SHARE!”
So what do you think? When we become adults and hoard possessions, are we not supposed to share anymore? I think not.
Sometimes it seems like David versus Goliath. We feel like we just have a pebble that we can throw at the problem of abject poverty. But throw or sling we must! Faith can move mountains. Am I right? If all of us throw our pebbles and sacrifice getting more and bigger and better possessions, we can make a dent in this terrible disparity of wealth.
Can I get an amen?
A lot of people will oppose my enthusiasm for helping the plight of those who are stuck in abject poverty by saying that we need to worry about HOME. We’ve got enough troubles in America to take care of, they say.
While this is a valid point, this should not be an excuse to stick our head in the sand of America and ignore helping the plight of those in SEVERE poverty.
There are many villages without running water or electricity and suffering from water-born diseases such as cholera. And, AIDS is still a problem! Plus malaria!
Can we not sacrifice just a little bit to help our brothers and sisters in Sub-Sahran Africa?
1Source of statistics for the USA is UC Davis (poverty.ucdavis.edu) and for Sub-Saharan Africa is The Borgen Project (borgenproject.org).